


Needs Not June for Beauty's Heightening

by R00bs_Teacup



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, No murder, Not much plot, Other, Oxford, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5925706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan Thursday is gone, Morse is supposed to be looking after the Thursdays, but things fall apart. There's not really much that happens here, it's slow and languid and is as much about Oxford as the three characters, I think. It's a musing, a might be. Canon compliant, just.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needs Not June for Beauty's Heightening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/gifts).



> Title is from 'Thyrsis', by Mathew Arnold, which is where we get the 'dreaming spires' thing. Who ever would suspect, without knowing, that poetry seems to be the source of many phrases and clichés and so on. Mostly, I guess, thanks to Shakespeare.

It's been like this since Miss Thursday left. The pub on a Friday, the pub on a Thursday, the pub on a Saturday. After work, comes the pub. Morse sits with Fred while Fred drinks exactly two pints, nursing them both, drawing it out. With both his children gone, Fred seems to feeling an aversion to home. Morse sits with him, and drives him, and accepts the inevitable invitation to come in for coffee. Mrs. Thursday seems as glad of his presence as Fred.

 

Today, a Sunday, Morse leaves the pub as Fred is still finishing up. Fred's been talking to Strange all evening. Morse isn't upset about that, but he is tired. He leaves the pub ahead of the others and stands under the sign, looking out at the Bodliean, then turning and looking down towards Hollywell street. A bicycle spins past going up Broad street, and Morse turns again, following it with his eyes, looking up. It's quiet, so he can see all the way to George Street.

 

Broad street got strange, late at night. It wasn’t just the buildings. Trinity’s great gates were like bastions, and Balliol’s façade was like a fortress, and all the buildings glowered down on the unsuspecting, but it wasn’t that, because as soon as you brushed it with your hand you realised that the colleges’ stone was kind. Morse knew the university was pitiless, but the stone was kind. It thrummed with history and stories, and the warmth of that. Fred said it was the silence of January, the students still down for Christmas, the tourists staying home for the off season. The quiet streets put Fred on edge, but Morse actually liked that- in January, the town belonged to the people who inhabited her, who lived through three-year-cycle after three-year-cycle and endured.

 

Morse moves from the shadow of The White Horse, crossing the road to the Sheldonian. There's a performance inside, and he can hear the singing. He sits on the steps and rests his arms on his knees, watching the pub across the way for the others' exit. The bells start to go at five to eleven, none of them quite on time. He can identify most of them from the order and their register. Univ first. Fred comes out, coat on but hat still in hand, and looks around. Morse gets to his feet and raises his hand. Fred crosses over, narrowly missing being squashed by a bike, just as Carfax chimes.

 

"Get some bloody lights you idiot!" Fred yells after the cyclist, jamming his hat on his head, storming to Morse's side. "Bloody idiot."

 

They walk towards the car, shoulders brushing. Up the broad towards Balliol, turning towards the Martys Memorial. Past the railings, the locked gates at the top of the steps that go down to the toilets. Morse moves closer to Fred, nudging him.

 

"I heard someone telling one of the tourists that the memorial was an underground church. To get in, they said, you go down those steps and knock on the wall," Morse says, pointing to the steps.

 

Fred laughs, looking up at the memorial.

 

"Latimer, Ridely, and Cranmer," Morse says, looking up too. They pause for a moment. It's strange, to look at something so familiar and really see it.

 

"Come on," Fred says. "Home."

 

Morse sleeps on Fred's sofa, curling his long frame into the cushions, finding the comfortable parts. Somehow, sometimes, he ends up like this. He can hear strained conversation from their bedroom, can hear Fred's sudden shout of frustration and Mrs. Thursday's low, hissed snap in return. Something between them seems to be slowly breaking. Morse promised Miss Thursday he'd look after them, but he doesn't know how to fix this.

 

Next Sunday, they don't work. Fred asks Morse to bring the car, anyway, and Morse does. Mrs Thursday packs a picnic and tries to send them away. Morse surprises himself by insisting she joins them. She sits beside him in the front, shoulders tense. Fred is silent in the back. Morse smiles at her, and pretends he can't feel the tension. He drives all the way out to Wolvercote and they walk for half an hour before spreading themselves by the river. It's not very warm, but there's sunshine and they have coats. There are cows and horses grazing the meadow at the moment. Nothing as far as the eye can see but green, other than the cows and horses.

 

Mrs. Thursday goes to stand by the water, crouching, feet bare. Morse and Fred watch her, and Morse tilts his head to one side, seeing, suddenly, her daughter in her. There's something young about going barefoot, and it makes her seem suddenly, sharply beautiful, crouched there. When she straightens she turns and looks down river, profile lit by the weak sunshine, hair blown by the wind. She is beautiful, Morse realises. The shadow of illusion of youth has vanished, but even without it, she is beautiful. The lines of her face are proud instead of tired, out here, and the wind has turned her cheeks pink.

 

"Want a round, Win?" Fred asks, halting, hesitant, but not irritable any more.

 

She comes and sits with them, tucking her legs under her, eating silently. Morse takes her place by the river and closes his eyes, feeling the earth beneath him. It's not like the moors. Nothing's like that. That's where he grew, it's in his blood and his bones. This, though. This, too, he can feel. He's always measuring everything, quantifying it, but he can't out here. Port Meadow's paths are etched into him from many wanderings as a student. He can feel the river, the ground thick with the feet that have trodden it.

 

To be almost in the middle of the city, and yet to find yourself on this kind of common land, with nothing around and nothing encroaching. Nothing allowed to be built that might impact the landscape. To live in a city that protects this, that values the empty space, that acknowledges it's power and it's necessity. Port Meadow, the river, the tow path and canal. Oxford doesn't turn without them, for no logical reason. Morse worries it over and over. He can find no reason, and yet Oxford without them would not tick over. The mechanism, the balance, would fail.

 

"Morse, come have some tea," Mrs. Thursday says.

 

Morse rejoins them, knees aching as he bends to sit, as if the land really has got into his bones, turning them to stone. Fred raising his eyebrows when Morse creaks, as his knee cracks. Mrs. Thursday tuts and rubs his knee, fingers working until he relaxes, tension bleeding out of his limbs. She realises what she's doing, and busies herself about the tea.

 

"I'm so used to Fred being the one..." She says.

 

"It's alright," Morse says. "It helped."

 

"We'll have to get you running," Fred says, with satisfaction. "Young lad like you, years of use yet if we keep you up."

 

"Running," Morse repeats.

 

"Oh Fred, leave him alone," Mrs. Thursday says.

 

She sounds fond and amused again, and Morse shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath. He hadn't noticed the band around his chest, tightening each time they fought, but now it's gone.

 

The Sunday next they're winding up a case, and work until twelve. Morse drives Thursday home, instead of to the pub, and gets invited in. They're only there for five minutes before Mrs. Thursday is bustling them out again, pressing rounds of sandwiches into their hands and laughing, shooing them back to the car. They drive into the middle of town and walk, all three side by side, down to Folly bridge. Mrs. Thursday tells them about an eights race, Queens, Keble and St John's setting up a friendly bet. She heard it from the newsagent in the covered market, where all the students get their Times.

 

Mores sets his sandwiches on the wall and unwraps them, leaning there as he eats, watching the river underneath him. The rainwaters have swelled it. It's not a good river for rowing, but he doesn't think that'll stop them. An eight with Keble colours on the oars comes up the river and then stops in front of the bridge. The cox is wearing a woolly hat and gloves. He steers them out of the current and then they lean on their oars, waiting. Queens is next to arrive, St John's last. The flashes of the colours on the oars is the only thing that identifies them- all the rowers are wrapped up.

 

"Lets go to the meadow," Fred says. "Get a better view."

 

They walk through the Head of the River's terrace, Fred pausing to suggest a pint but giving in easily. The small gate, clogged with long queues in the summer, is deserted now, as is the meadow. They pass a single couple.

 

"First week," Fred says, as the boats set off. "Be seeing more of them from now."

 

"They're going down and back up," Mrs. Thursday says. "Shall we wait and see who wins?"

 

"Keble will," Morse says, squinting to asses. "Queens is heavy in the water, and St John's seems to have a new man. Their stroke is off. Keble has a good cox- he made a good call on that current. They shot ahead."

 

"Let's walk around to the college and back," Fred says. "See if Morse is right."

 

Morse is right. Keble win by a long chalk, Queens and St John's coming in a stroke apart a few minutes later. Mrs. Thursday applauds the rowers, and they get a 'halloo!' in return, all the young men laughing. They walk back across the meadow again, pausing to take in Christ Church.

 

"I forget how beautiful Oxford is," Fred says.

 

"We should come to the cathedral for evensong," Mrs. Thursday says.

 

Sitting in the Cathedral, on Thursday at six, Morse looks up, closes his eyes, and settles in to listen to the music. The clear, high voices of the choristers from Christ Church Chorister School mix with the college choir, blending and separating and harmonising seamlessly. Fred rests a hand on Morse's shoulder.

 

This is Oxford, too. The music. The blurring of lines between the college, the school, and the town who come to listen. Fred's hand. Win. Morse keeps his eyes closed, but he can feel his mouth turning up in a smile. He might not be able to fix their marriage, but he knows Oxford. He can show them, and let them show him. Oxford is a city of divides, but it's also a city of bridges. It's a city of rivers, but also of banks and meadows. There's firm ground among the rushing water. It's a city of colleges, but also of stone. It all bleeds together: the Thursdays, Morse, the city. Fred, the music. The voices softening, Win.

>  
> 
> "Towery city and branchy between towers;
> 
> Cukoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;
> 
> The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country town did
> 
> Once encounter in, here coped and poisèd powers;
> 
>  
> 
> Thou hast a base and brickish skirt there, sours
> 
> That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
> 
> Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
> 
> Rural, rural keeping– folk, flocks, and flowers.
> 
>  
> 
> Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
> 
> He lived on; there weeds and waters, these walls are what
> 
> He haunted who of all men most sways my spirit to peace;
> 
>  
> 
> Of realty the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
> 
> Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
> 
> Who fired France for Mary without spot."

 

Duns Scotus Oxford, Gerard Manly Hopkins

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My father and I were discussing how the Cecil Rhodes statue we have in Oxford should be replaced by Ozymandius. This has little bearing on the story, but I feel Morse would appreciate that idea, so I'm sharing it here in the end note because... I think I'm clever.


End file.
